What is the difference between Connectivity and Intimacy?
I heard Evan Williams talk about his company Twitter a few weeks back on Jerry Michalski’s YiTan conference call. Evan is struggling over what to do with Twitter. To say the least, Twitter has buzz. What Twitter does is to automate the ‘shout-out’ (as in, “I just want to do a shout-out to my buddiesâ€). As they put it, they want to answer the question of “what are you doing right now?” With all the buzz, Twitter is the working definition of a hot startup of our era… But to Evan, and I think to his credit, he sees it as a mere “feature†rather than an application or a business. A feature that many websites might have in the next couple of years… He’s not sure how or whether to make money from it, in and of itself.
What I find so remarkable about this is that most business folk would be looking for the exit, shopping their ‘captured’ audience around for sale to the usual suspects. But Evan is saying this is really just a part of something else and not standalone, even if it has million+ people using it. It’s one thing to use something, and it’s another to find deep value that enriches your life.
My suspicion is that shoutcasting is nothing but a social fad sweeping the tech savvy crowd. And I don’t think it’s going much beyond that. It has usefulness, but it’s not something so rich that one devotes oneself to it. So I think Evan is right to think of shoutcasting as a useful part of something else much more helpful in ones life.
Desire to Connect
Shoutcasting and Twitter are speaking to something substantial that so many of us want. It’s pushing against the massive alienation we feel and the urgent desire to connect to each other.
What I suspect though is that a lot of that can be done on a personal and local scale, in direct and intimate forms, with existing technology. One technology I like a lot is the dinner party. Works great, it’s charming, and a rich experience for every sense. Compare that to a 140 character messages delivered over a little glass screen interrupting a conversation with a friend over lunch.